I'm interested in finding out more about the software-only media player that's being developed as part of OpenHome.

A few questions to start the discussion:

Will this be a Songcast sender as well as a Songcast receiver/player?

Will it support both the multicast and unicast forms of Songcast?

Will it play from other sources as well as the Songcast receiver source? For example, will it play FLAC files from a local drive, or an HTTP stream in FLAC, WAV, or AAC format?

How will it be controlled? For example, will it have a GUI, or will it provide networked UPnP services for control input, or will it provide software APIs to allow it to be integrated with other software?

(06-07-2011 11:50 AM)simoncn Wrote: I'm interested in finding out more about the software-only media player that's being developed as part of OpenHome.

A few questions to start the discussion:

Will this be a Songcast sender as well as a Songcast receiver/player?

Eventually yes. It will start by supporting the playlist service first. Songcast is definitely a target after that.

(06-07-2011 11:50 AM)simoncn Wrote: Will it support both the multicast and unicast forms of Songcast?

Yes, when Songcast is implemented, it will be a full Songcast implementation.

(06-07-2011 11:50 AM)simoncn Wrote: Will it play from other sources as well as the Songcast receiver source? For example, will it play FLAC files from a local drive, or an HTTP stream in FLAC, WAV, or AAC format?

Yes. It will play most formats provided to it by a OpenHome Media Control Point provided those files are accessible over the network.

(06-07-2011 11:50 AM)simoncn Wrote: How will it be controlled? For example, will it have a GUI, or will it provide networked UPnP services for control input, or will it provide software APIs to allow it to be integrated with other software?

It will be a OpenHome Media Renderer. This means that the application itself has no requirement for a UI. It's intended to be used by one of the many OpenHome Media Control Points.

(06-07-2011 11:50 AM)simoncn Wrote: Which platforms will it support?

I'm aiming at mac, windows, linux. Although they might not all be released at precisely the same time. The code base is all based around ohNet, which runs on all three of those platforms. It will also be possible to run the core code on various embedded rtos platforms.

(06-07-2011 11:50 AM)simoncn Wrote: Will it be available as open source?

Of course! I'm mulling over different license options. Leaning towards one of LGPL or BSD. What do you reckon?

Does the OpenHome Playlist service include the Linn extensions for gapless playback without intervention by the control point? If so, will control points that support the Linn extensions recognise ohMediaPlayer as a "Linn" player and automatically take advantage of these extensions?

Can you say a bit more about what ohNet is? Will this be available as open source?

The BSD license provides more flexibility for people reusing the code, so it probably makes more sense to use this for a reference implementation.

1) The Playlist service is not something that does or does not support gapless playback. Rather, the Playlist service is one of the components that allows an OpenHome Media Player, soft or hard, to deliver gapless playback. In particular, it provides the ability for the Media Player to know what the next file to play is even before it has finished collecting and decoding the current one.

So, if you implement the Playlist service, you have half a chance of providing gapless playback.

2) ohNet has nothing particularly to do with dot Net. It is primarily an open source cross-platform UPnP stack. It runs on Linux, Windows, Mac. It has C, C++, and C# language support and will soon acquire Java bindings as well. It is called ohNet because it is the OpenHome's networking stack.

Quote:If so, will control points that support the Linn extensions recognise ohMediaPlayer as a "Linn" player and automatically take advantage of these extensions?

Linn's Davaar release transistioned to the OpenHome Media services which are all specified at the links above. As such any control point that works with Linn's Davaar release is already fully compliant with OpenHome Media standard.

Quote:Can you say a bit more about what ohNet is? Will this be available as open source?

Quote:The BSD license provides more flexibility for people reusing the code, so it probably makes more sense to use this for a reference implementation.

Yes, but it doesn't ensure that improvements made to the library get contributed back to society. The LGPL allows proprietary applications to be built around the library, but stands a better chance of ensuring that the library itself doesn't fork in the wild between all the competing applications that use it.

(06-07-2011 01:28 PM)rik Wrote: The Playlist service does support gapless playback so any Linn compatible CP will work (Kinsky, Konductor, Chorus etc).

To be clear, those three control points listed are, as of their most recent releases, compliant with the OpenHome Media Standard. Linn's DS happens to be also compliant. As such they work together. It's not the case that you need a Linn compliant control point.

Quote:ohNet looks like an API extension (or possible completed device architecture) based on top of .NET (& hence Mono for OS-X / Linux).

It's not.

It's a cross platform upnp control and device stack written in C++ with numerous language bindings. It's got absolutely nothing to do with .NET except that there are bindings provided for the C# language.